Feature by the editors of BookPage

At last, our editors have made their choices for the best children's books of the year, from picture books to middle grade to young adult titles. It wasn't easy to decide, but after we roared our terrible roars, and gnashed our terrible teeth, we settled down long enough to agree on 30 excellent books. Picture BooksBalloons Over Broadway by Melissa SweetBlackout by John RoccoBlue...

A near-future story that’s both bitter and sweet

Having tackled amnesia and the afterlife in previous novels, Gabrielle Zevin turns to the future in All These Things I’ve Done. Unlike many of the proliferating dystopias that have taken over young adult literature, this glimpse at the year 2083 is funny and romantic as 16-year-old Anya Balanchine looks back at one wild year in the heart of New York City.In a Prohibition-like age in which...

Building memories, one by one

Sixteen-year-old Naomi Porter could tell you all about how she was found in an empty typewriter case in a Russian church, but I hate orphan stories, she declares in Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. This psychological novel by author Gabrielle Zevin instead presents a first-person account of Naomi's unusual love story, which, she reveals, involves chance, gravity [and] a dash of head trauma....

Lingering at death's door

One moment, 15-year-old Liz Hall is riding her bike to meet a friend at the mall. The next thing she knows, she's alone on a mysterious cruise ship with lots of senior citizens playing shuffleboard. Liz soon realizes there's something odd about all the passengers, including herself. It turns out that they've all recently died (Liz was hit by a taxi) and are heading to Elsewhere. To...